If God is good (and all-knowing and all-powerful), why would He create humans or angelic creatures with the capacity to bring death into the world? If He could have made it an impossibility for pain and suffering to ever enter the world, why wouldn’t He?
Maybe you’ve heard it said that there are some things God can’t do. For example, God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). If God is truth (John 14:6), then God cannot lie, for lies are the opposite of truth. If God lied, then God would no longer be truth, which would mean that God would no longer be Himself, for God is truth. It is an impossibility.
The broader understanding of God that we can take from this is that it is impossible for God to contradict His nature. To give another example that might be harder to stomach: if God is love, then God’s justice cannot be a contradiction of that love. It must be an act of God’s divine love. If it is an act of God, it must be done out of love for God is love.
Now, when God created both humans and at least some of the supernatural beings, He made them in His image. (See Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm or chapter 8 of the Epic Gospel book. We’ll focus on humans for this post.) This means that God put limits on His creative capacity when He created people. If God wanted to have mankind made in His image so that we could rule (Gen. 1:26), then what He could make man capable of—or incapable of—was limited.
The example Scripture gives us of this limitation is that of children:
When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
Genesis 5:1, 3 ESV
God’s self-imposed limitations in the creation of mankind can be understood in comparison of a father to his children. Just as sons often resemble their fathers in many ways—physically, emotionally, in mannerisms and social skills, temperaments, tendencies, and others, creatures made in God’s image resemble God in many aspects. Adam had many children (Gen. 5:4) who certainly resembled him in some ways but would also be very different from both Adam and each other in some respects.
Although Adam and his children shared similarities, the limitations of Adam’s ability to father children “in his own likeness” are clear. Adam wasn’t fathering monkeys or trees. He was fathering humans that looked and acted like him, even while they still had their own individuality.
So, how or why are humans created in the likeness or image of God? The image of God language in Genesis 1:26-28 is also immersed in rulership language. We were created in God’s image to rule the earth (and more than the earth—Psalm 8). Thus, God also would have to give us rulership capacities in a likeness similar to His own.
This brings us back to death entering the world in Genesis 3. The rulership capacity given to Adam and Eve included choices. Would they “rule over” and “subdue” the serpent, or would they let the serpent rule over them? Would they be willing to obtain the wisdom to rule according to the wisdom of God, or would they claim that wisdom on their own terms?
So, why would a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God create humans (and at least some supernatural beings) with the capacity to bring death into the world? I would argue that if God wanted us to be made in His image, then He left Himself only one option in this regard. If God wanted creatures made in His own image, then His only option was to give those creatures the same freedom of decision that He has. And thus, He would also have to be willing to live with the consequences. Alternatively, had God decided to make a world where pain was an impossibility, then we (and at least some supernatural creatures) would not have been made in His image, meaning that we would be like the animals, without the capacity to rule in the way that humans do.
If God is good and God is love, why would He create the world with the possibility of pain? Because He loved us enough to give us the gift of rulership by making us in His image, and with that gift comes the risk that we would not only squander it, but in many cases, use it maliciously. And so, we experience pain because of the sin of humans and supernatural creatures.
While conversations surrounding the problem of pain and suffering inevitably gravitate toward human suffering, it is rare to hear a different question posed. How does God feel about all of this?
Epic Gospel 